Mental health environments must be designed to support care and rehabilitation while bringing safety and resilience to facilities.
Components of buildings we take for granted must be looked at differently in mental health environments.
A bedroom door may need to protect privacy, resist damage, minimise ligature risk and still allow staff to gain access during a barricade. A wardrobe, washbasin or window fitting must perform its everyday function while also significantly reducing the likelihood of potential misuse.
Practical application and robust design are both crucial elements.
This is the difficult reality facing those who design products, specify for, and operate within mental health environments. A damaged fitting can yield material that may be used by an individual to harm themselves or others. Access to rooms must be secure when needed, but accessible to staff in case an emergency intervention is required. Likewise, staff must be able to go about their workplace in a way that mitigates unnecessary risk and enhances their ability to deliver care.
Equally, mental health facilities must also support dignity, recovery, and wellbeing. An environment that looks punitive or overtly institutional can work against those aims.
Another challenge exists in creating safe spaces that are once familiar and humane. While product performance is crucial, appearance matters too.
Safe spaces should aim to be at once familiar and humane
The consequences of system failures can be severe, yet the market has not always given healthcare providers a consistent way to compare product claims. Terms such as “anti-ligature”, or “tamper-proof” may sound reassuring, but without standardisation, repeatable testing, and robust verification processes, there is no way of distinguishing between a proven product feature and a marketing term.
Specifiers need ways to gain assured insights into how a product performs under specific conditions and whether it is suitable for a care environment.
In this way, care environments have fallen behind. Inconsistent product standards and opaque manufacturer assurance are challenges overcome in other, related industries. Global fire and security markets, for example, leverage the authority of trusted third-party certifiers.
With the assistance of experts who design standards and then test and certify products against them, specifiers are assured a product will perform under strict requirements, bringing confidence to procurement processes.
Leveraging the Loss Prevention and Certification Board’s expertise in assessing and certifying products for safety-critical applications, BRE and the Design in Mental Health Network have brought together manufacturers, designers, healthcare providers and NHS stakeholders to develop common testing guidance for products used in mental health facilities.
The objective was to replace fragmented approaches with a consistent methodology through which performance could be assessed, communicated, and used in informed specification.
The collaboration underpins the Products for Mental Health Safeguarding scheme, known as ProMHS. The scheme applies to common components of healthcare environments such as doorsets, windows and associated hardware, furniture, sanitary fittings, fixtures and fittings, and safety devices, particularly those intended for higher-risk or infrequently observed spaces.
The scheme is not the end of the responsibility but the start
Testing methods have been developed to reflect the requirements of products used in mental health facilities. These include a product’s accessibility as a ligature point, robustness and durability including how products behave under impact or attach, and anti-barricade requirements for door sets, windows and hardware.
These assessments go beyond visual inspection. The products are installed on representative substrates, so testing matches the manufacturer's installation instructions. This way, products come under repeatable, replicable testing within lab-like conditions, enabling standardised information around product performance and suitability.
Importantly, the guidance does not reduce every product or setting to a simplistic universal pass or fail. It records achieved performance against defined criteria. This enables specifiers to match performance and risk assessments to specific requirements.
When it comes to protecting people, rigour and transparency are non-negotiable.
To make the procurement process simpler, more efficient and effective, products that successfully complete testing and verification under the ProMHS scheme are assigned a performance rating and made visible online, enabling fast and transparent insights for decision-makers.
The guidance does not reduce every product or setting to a simplistic universal pass or fail
Under the scheme, mental health facilities gain visibility, assurance, and product performance insights.
The scheme is not the end of the responsibility but the start. Product performance can be affected by incorrect installation, unauthorised alterations, poor maintenance, or interaction with surrounding products. Tested and verified products must therefore sit within a wider system of competent design, installation, inspection, maintenance and continuing risk assessment.
Clear, consistent processes and trusted product performance provides mental health environments with the information needed to make the most effective decisions.
Through testing and visible verification processes, manufacturers can evolve their products, specifiers can make informed choices, and patients, staff, and visitors can interact with a more robust, effective, and ultimately safer environment.
